The Corrections Chapter 3 Summary

The More He Thought About It, The Angrier He Got

• Gary Lambert has been "worrying a lot about his mental health" (3.2) lately. At the moment, he's in his personal darkroom, developing old photographs of his parents.
• There's a knock on the door—it's his youngest son, Jonah; Gary gets back to work on the photos while Jonah sits and reads Prince Caspian.
• Gary's wife Caroline (who's currently playing soccer in the rain with their other sons, Aaron and Caleb) built the darkroom for Gary's birthday after he had talked about making an "All-Time Lambert Two Hundred" (3.18) photo album.
• The soccer ball hits the side of the garage and Gary steps out to watch the game. Caroline seems hurt—she's limping.
• The game stops and Caroline runs inside. Gary hears a scream, which sends Caleb and Aaron sprinting into the house. They call for Gary, telling him that Grandma is on the phone.
• Gary talks to Enid while Caroline sits in the kitchen and winces with pain. Enid is asking—of course—if Gary and the family are coming to St. Jude for Christmas.
• Gary asks Caroline if she'll go, but she complains about her injury, saying she "was fine until [she] ran to get the phone [...] which was ringing for the fiftieth time" (3.59, 61). Gary doesn't believe her and pushes for an answer.
• She refuses, having made an agreement with Gary years ago that she would never go back to St. Jude.
• Gary gets back on the phone and tries to talk his way out of the situation; in the background, Caroline is screaming about an ambulance.
• Suddenly, Gary hears breathing on the line—it's Caroline. He runs into their bedroom and yells at her for eavesdropping while she meekly protests. Enid has already hung up when he gets back on the line.
• When Gary calls Enid back, she tells him about the letter from the Axon Corporation. Enid wants them to double their offer to $10,000, but Gary thinks that Enid and Alfred could get more.
• Alfred gets on the line, and Gary tries to convince him to hold out for more money. Alfred is disinterested, telling Gary that he's giving half of the money to Orfic Midland, as per the unofficial agreement he reached with the company back in the day.
• This infuriates Gary, because he knows that the Midland Pacific that Alfred is so loyal to doesn't exist anymore—all of his former peers have disappeared along the long string of buyouts and mergers.
• This exchange reminds Gary of when Alfred left the company in the first place.
• Alfred had been offered a good, high-paying job after the Wroth takeover and was planning on taking it. Then, out of the blue, he comes home and tells Enid that he's not going to take the job, even though this means he'll lose a significant chunk of his pension.
• Gary followed the fate of Orfic Midland after Alfred left. The buyers ended up getting bought: Orfic Midland was acquired by CenTrust and renamed OrficM. Trains are out, and instead, the company now focuses on "prison-building, prison management, gourmet coffee, and financial services" (3.210). That's a winning combo.
• Gary finds Caleb sitting outside his door after he finally hangs up. He tells Gary that his new hobby is surveillance and that he wants to set up security cameras in the kitchen.
• Gary is normally enthusiastic about his sons' hobbies, but not this time. If Caleb puts a camera in the kitchen, then everyone will be able to see how much Gary drinks—and that's a big no-no.
• Now Gary and Caroline are in their bedroom and right back into the heat of the argument. Gary still can't get past that fact that he saw her limping before she came inside, thereby proving her to be a liar.
• Gary starts to shout, but he's interrupted when Aaron comes in and begs him to stop. Gary chills out momentarily and tries to comfort Aaron, but it quickly devolves into Gary interrogating his son about Caroline's injury.
• Things are calmer when Gary joins the family for dinner that night. He decides to make mixed grill—but not before grabbing a nice glass of gin.
• Although Gary usually loves grilling, he finds himself disinterested as soon as the meat plops on the grill this particular evening.
• He serves the family their food, but a stray comment about Caroline's injury sends her, Caleb, and Aaron to watch television. Jonah humors his dad, however, and eats his dinner at the table.
• Afterward, Gary goes down to the basement to research the Axon Corporation. Jonah follows; he has another Narnia book to read.
• Gary does an Internet search for Axon Corporation and finds the homepage for Westportfolio Biofunds.
• It turns out that Alfred's patent is being used for something called the Eberle Process, a supposedly revolutionary way to transform the human brain. These findings only further convince Gary that Alfred is leaving a lot of money on the table.
• With this new information in hand, Gary calls Alfred back
• Gary tells his father that the Axon Corporation has boatloads of money, but Alfred still refuses, saying that the contact has already been notarized. Gary hangs up in frustration.
• He and the kids visited his parents back in March of that year. Jonah had thoroughly enjoyed both St. Jude and the company of his grandparents—so much so that he had actually been the one who requested spending Christmas in St. Jude.
• Gary wakes up in his bed. He touches Caroline and she shudders awake. He once again accuses her of lying about her injury. You just don't know when to quit, huh Gary?
• For some reason, Gary thinks this a good time to ask Caroline about Christmas. Caroline doesn't want to spend time with a nut job like Enid and, what's more, Gary promised her that they'd never have to go back to St. Jude (3.543). She tells Gary that he's depressed but he skirts the issue.
• Fast forward a few weeks: Gary is sitting next to Denise in a hotel ballroom, watching a promotional video for the Axon Corporation's initial public offering.
• In the video, Earl Eberle is pitching Correcktall, a new drug that "offers [...] the possibility of renewing and improving the hard wiring of an adult human brain" (3.618).
• Gary has been researching Axon a lot and now he's looking to invest in the company. His plan is to buy five thousand shares, but he's had a hard time finding enough available stocks.
• The promo video finishes and Axon representatives start talking about Correcktall. One heckler calls the drug an "ethical nightmare" (3.754), but he's quickly shot down by the suits with microphones.
• When the speech finishes, Denise suggests that they leverage Alfred's patent to get him enrolled in the Correcktall trial studies. Gary had also been planning on using Alfred's leverage—to buy extra shares, that is.
• They approach Merilee Finch, CEO of the Axon Corporation. Denise explains her idea and Finch seems into it. There's just one catch: Alfred will be deemed ineligible should he be diagnosed with dementia or Alzheimer's (3.800).
• Finch hands Denise her business card and walks away. Gary follows her and demands that she offer him more shares, but she just laughs in his face.
• Denise and Gary argue over where Alfred will stay during the Correcktall trial. Denise suggests that they split custody, but Gary wants no part whatsoever.
• After Gary relents—a little—Denise pushes him about coming to St. Jude for Christmas. Gary gives shifty answers, as usual.
• Oh, but Denise ain't done yet, girlfriend. She also takes a moment to verbally bludgeon him for giving Enid the idea that she's dating a married man.
• When Denise first moved to Philadelphia, Gary was excited at the prospect of making Denise a part of his new family. However, "he felt as if he hardly knew her" (3.879) even after living in the same city for fifteen years.
• They had a conversation, roughly a year prior, about a colleague of Gary's who was stuck in an affair. Gary couldn't figure out why the woman bothered, but Denise's knowing responses made him suspicious.
• He had revealed those suspicions to Enid the following Christmas (the previous Christmas in the present-day timeline) after his jealousy toward Denise boiled over.
• Gary heads back to work at CenTrust and has a minor psychotic break while standing in the elevator. In his delirium, he hears his coworkers spewing non-sequiturs like "the pamphlet is the Devil's work" and "girl, this ain't replacement faith" (3.917, 924).
• When he gets to his office, his receptionist tells him that Caroline has been calling all day. Gary calls her and she frantically tells him that someone is trying to break into the house.
• He rushes home to find… everything looking normal. Caroline and the kids are watching television as if nothing had happened.
• After staking a new security sign and tossing back a few martinis, Gary starts preparing mixed grill (once again) for dinner.
• He goes in for another drink and forgets about the grill; when he comes back outside, the food is burnt to a crisp.
• He serves the family charred meat and vegetables. Their disappointment is evident, so he storms off before anyone can touch their food.
• In a drunken rage, he grabs a ladder and hedge clipper and gets to work on some low-hanging tree limbs that have been bothering him. Yeah, this is going to end well.
• As he struggles to climb the ladder, Gary loses his grip on the hedge clipper. Luckily, he catches it; unluckily, he catches it blade first.
• Although Gary knows he should go to a hospital, he also knows that he is as drunk as a skunk. Actually, he might be drunker than that—he's drunker than a skunk living in the rafters of a frat house.
• So he sneaks in the bathroom, bleeding profusely, and tries to fix the cut without his family realizing. He uses several towels to stop the wound.
• You can bet your butt that he needs another drink after all of this. As he pours his next martini, he notices a camera mounted to the ceiling, following his every move.
• Gary wakes up the next morning with a "radical new plan"—"to do absolutely nothing" (3.1045). Caroline drops the kids off at school but Gary doesn't move a muscle.
• Caroline returns a half-hour later. She asks Gary about his hand, but he remains silent.
• Finally, she asks him if he's depressed and he says yes. With that, "weeks of accumulated tension" (3.1062) are drained in an instant.
• Gary finally tells her that only people who want to go to St. Jude's have to go; the rest can stay home.
• Gary's depression fades as soon as he admits to it. He and Caroline make love for the first time in weeks—although Gary is more aroused by the thought of buying some sexy Axon stocks than being with his beautiful wife.
• Then Enid calls from the cruise. Although it's irrational, Gary's first thought it that "she was calling because she knew that he'd betray her" (3.1078).